• The finances are tight. Luckily we have our friend Grant Shapps, the Conservative co-chair, and his alter ego "Michael Green" on hand to count the pennies. He's a big one for best value. "The risk is here that we listen to people who say 'of course, all you need to do ... is spend more money' – that's not credible," he said today, on Radio 4's World at One. But some are wondering whether Shapps himself has been a bit guilty of splashing around the public cash. Why, blogger Eoin Clarke asked him, did you submit expenses in 2007 for £900 on a webcam when such things can be picked up for £50? Ah, said Shapps, it wasn't actually a webcam – though it clearly says webcam on the receipt. It was a camcorder, and with it we "reduced expenditure on newsletters to zero". That's great, but it must have been a jolly spiffing camcorder, said sceptics. State of the art and all that. They've taken to flagging up cheaper alternatives. Unfair, really. Perhaps Steven Spielberg came with it.

• After all those brickbats about female presenters being marginalised, more gender difficulties for the BBC. Now it's Andrew Marr in the firing line, in the Radio Times. "Andrew Marr's History of the World brought home to me that women have played no place in history, except for looking cute and bearing children," writes Frances Pollard of Leicestershire. "I thought Cleopatra might have had an inkling about politics, but it was shown to me that her only attribute was beauty. I don't think Andrew Marr mentioned any other girlies, but good luck to him to leave us out. Reaching for the bra I burned many years ago, I now concede that women have done nothing through history except to look enticing and admire their men. It is so good to see all this in a TV documentary to ensure all our young men and women know their place in the past and future." That's what Aunty's for: to educate, inform, and entertain.

• To Paris, where politicos continue to fret about the dire state of the economy in the face of credit agency downgrades and to seethe about the attack on governments past and present emblazoned across the front of this week's Economist. The republic has seen better days. For all that, finance minister Pierre Moscovici seems happy with his lot. Apparently he is cock-a-hoop at being finally able to get rid of the cream and black "zebra" carpet installed in the ministerial office by his predecessor, Christine Lagarde, now head of the IMF. Lagarde chose the pattern because she found it "feminine". Moscovici told advisors it made him "feel seasick". And he's sorted it. A man for troubled times. Shocking that anyone would say they are not taking the crisis seriously.

• More shirt problems for Big Dave Cameron, meanwhile, who was snapped at the London lord mayor's banquet the other evening with his dress shirt gaping to reveal his tummy. After all that money on the personal trainer, still no washboard pecs to speak of. Now Herman van Rompuy, the less-than-world-famous president of the European council, has warned that the upcoming budget summit will be elongated – what diplomats call a "three-shirter", which in truth means a six-shirter for a fastidious chap like Dave. But help is at hand. The Bono-backed anti-poverty lobby, ONE, has sent the PM a Lifesaver shirt in case the talks do indeed go into extra time. It comes with care instructions "to protect EU development aid when ironing out the details". But for the most part, he'll do what he's told and wear the hair shirt provided by his tough-guy strategist Lynton Crosby. If Crosby supplies a thong, he'll wear that too.

• Finally, it's hunting season in the US but it's best to go prepared. After a busy day of shooting things, the Generac portable generator makes that log cabin nice and cosy. Two types, the manufacturer tell us – one lightweight, the other more substantial. But "best of all, both generators are reasonably priced, so there's still room in the budget for the venison your readers will have to secretly buy if Bambi escapes them". Poor Bambi, nowhere's truly safe at this time of year. As the comedian Robin Williams once observed: right to bear arms, right to arm bears.